Spruce up your porch with this stenciled 'welcome' planter

Author of A Lo and Behold Life Blog (http://aloandbeholdlife.blogspot.com). I'm Lo (short for Lauren.. not because I'm 5'2"). I'm married to an adoring & hilarious hubs & am a mom to 3 year old twin boys who seem to be in a constant sta...

Make a great first impression by stunning your guests with this stenciled planter

Did you know that first impressions are formed in less than 30 seconds? When you invite friends and family to your home, the front-door entry is often the first thing they see. Make a big impact with a charming planter at the front door to greet your guests.

Check out this easy tutorial on how to create a do-it-yourself stencil to turn an old galvanized bucket into a personalized planter that will create a warm welcome to your home for friends and family.

Let's start with your list of supplies:

Yep! That's it. Chances are you probably have most of this stuff lying around the house. OK, here we go...

First step: Get creative

You may think you need some fancy-schmancy editing software to create a stencil, but guess what? You don't! There are some great online photo editing tools at your fingertips for no cost at all. To create my planter stencil I used Ribbet.com. Follow these simple steps to get your stencil started.

Ribbet has all sorts of great image icons and fonts to choose from. It also allows you to upload your own fonts into the tool. For my stencil I chose one of my favorite fonts, Petunia Bounce. In the Editing tool, select the "Text" tab. Choose a font and add your text to the image.

Since my stencil was being used for a large bucket, I wanted to make the font as large as possible. Because of this I created two separate images — one image for the first few letters of "Welcome" and one image for the last four letters. Then I printed both images onto paper, trimmed it with some scissors and taped it together to create my "Welcome" stencil.